[MUSIC] Hi.
I'm joined by Danny Lohan. Danny is a graduate student here
at the University of Illinois, and was one of the first gurus we found
on the online MakerLab back in 2013. Danny knows more about 3D printing
than just about anybody that I know. I thought he'd be a great ambassador
in terms of showing us how to turn your ideas into objects. We go through three steps. First of all, how to take an idea and
create it using a 3D modeling program. In this case, Dan will be demonstrating
very quickly a program called Fusion 360. >> That's right. >> Second, how to prepare that digital
file for printing on a 3D printer. And finally, how to actually take
that file, put it on a printer, and come out with a finished object. Danny, what are you going to
show us how to make today? >> Today, I think we will go
through making a jet airplane. The reason I choose this object is
because the software, Fusion 360, makes it really easy to
model parts such as this. >> Danny,
what's the first step in this process? How do you go from an idea
to an object like this? >> The first step is to choose
the appropriate software and as I mentioned,
today we're going to use Fusion 360. >> Fusion 360 is an Autodesk product. >> That's right. >> It's one of the most advanced
modelling programs out there. >> That's right. >> We're actually, if you stick around
with the rest of the specialization, in the software portion, the software
course of our 3D printer specialization, you actually get the hands-on
instruction by Jeff Smith who works for Autodesk and is a Fusion 360 ambassador. You should be able to, by the end of that course, learn how
to make things like this, right Danny? >> That's right. >> Go ahead and take us through the steps. >> Sure. The first thing we're going to have
to do is open the software package. This is the icon for Fusion 360. If we click on that,
it'll start opening the software. Now what's unique to this software
is it's actually cloud-based. >> What does that mean? >> That means you'll need some internet
connection to login to the software and through that connection and your account, all your part files will be saved online
>> Are there advantages to being online? Could you share your files with people
working in other parts of the world? >> That's right. Fusion 360 makes it easy to collaborate
with people around the world or locally when working on a part file. >> Okay.
Now what do we have here, Dan? Looks like we have a topographical
map without anything on it. >> This is the user interface for
Fusion 360. The reason I'm using Fusion 360 to design
this airplane is that Fusion 360 doesn't work like traditional CAD programs,
where you have parametric modeling. It actually uses something
called T-splines. You can think about it like sculpting. We can start with a block of material,
say clay, and we can pull and morph it until we get a shape like
the airplane in just a few minutes. I'll show you a quick example. If we create this tool,
we enter the form environment. In the form environment,
we can input objects and modify those basically free form. Here we have an object. One thing you would need to do is define
how many faces and edges are in this part. You can do that with
the dialogue box presented. >> Now what's a face and what's an edge? >> An edge is represented by the line and four lines connected together
usually represent a face. Beyond the creation tool, we can use the
modified tool which has a wide assortment of modifications we can use to change the
shape and sculpt this into an airplane. We can directly pull, push, and modify this object with
simple clicks of a button. Once we have our desired faces
selected by clicking the alt button, we can extrude this face
by selecting one of this outer rim of icons,
we can resize the objects or faces. This way, we can increase the size
of our object by molding it. In order to create the wings, we can
select one of the surfaces or more and use the extrude function
to pull that surface out, resize it and reposition it. We can do the same on the other side for
the second surface. By doing similar procedures, we can repeat this on all the surfaces to create
different features on the airplane. >> Are there any tests in
Fusion 360 to let you know that the actual design can be 3D printed? >> What's really nice about Fusion 360 is
if you create this whole model in the form environment, it is guaranteed to be
watertight and ready for printing. You do not have to take additional steps,
like you might with other software, to make sure that you
can 3D print your part. >> What is watertight,
what does that mean? >> Watertight means that
there is a closed surface. You can imagine dropping
this airplane in water, water would not go inside the airplane. >> And to print an object,
it should be watertight, correct? >> That's right. >> Why don't you go ahead and take us
through the steps in terms of moving from this finished 3D model in a Fusion
360 to the next step in the process, which is preparing the design file for
printing. >> What you need to do is go into the file
menu, and click the 3D print button. >> A 3D print menu item. >> That's right.
>> Makes it easy. >> From here, we can select the object,
make any modifications you might want to it regarding resolution and
output it directly to a STL file. >> Now STL is the PDF of 3D printing,
right? >> That's right. >> Other programs besides Fusion
360 such as Tinker CAD or Google Sketch Up, for example,
will also produce STL files. >> That's right. And that's the output when you take that
STL, and the next step is to prepare that in a 3D, it's called a slicing program,
which prepares the file for printing. >> That's right. >> The reason we do that
is because these programs, even though Fusion 360 was designed with
3D printers in mind but these programs are creating 2D images that are not ready
for actual three dimensional printing. In essence, what they're lacking is the command instructions that tell
the printer, the print head, where to go. >> Right. >> How do we take that STL file and
put that into the slicing program? >> Sure. Each 3D printer comes with its own slicing
software, so the Ultimaker specifically, uses a software called Cura, and
we can open Cura by clicking this icon. >> You can download Cura for free? >> That's right. Slicing is the essential step between
your 3D part file and a 3D printed file. What slicing software does is it
takes the part file you have, and it will cut it into
a large number of layers. You can imagine taking a slice with
a chef's knife of your 3D part. >> Okay. >> On each of those layers, it will trace
the path that this end effector takes to draw the part on each layer. By successfully drawing each layer,
eventually, the printer will print the part. This is basically making the recipe or
cookbook for this particular print file. >> Okay.
That's a great description. >> We can open the airplane file and
it places it on the build plate, the area on the bottom is
called the build plate. As long as your file
fits within these bounds, it should be able to
print by the Ultimaker. When the object is imported,
it might have the wrong orientation, we can change the orientation by selecting
the object and clicking the rotate button. There's a lot of customization
when using Cura. One thing you might
note right off the bat, is it shows the amount of time that
it will take to print the part. >> Okay. >> What's important here is if
you adjust the, say resolution, make it higher fidelity,
it will increase the time. But you can do certain things such as
increasing the amount of material inside the part, so adding an infill,
making it partly hollow, and this will decrease the time
it takes to print. You can adjust the settings based on
what you need to get a print that's reasonable in time. Another thing we can do is change
the size of the object we want to print. If you click the object,
there is a scale button. Right now, we have 100% scale,
so it's one. If we resize the object to say half scale, we will notice that the time is
significantly reduced for print. >> Danny, while this is working,
what are some of the main considerations that someone has to keep in
mind when engaged in this slicing process? What are the typical things that are
adjusted besides the size of the design? >> The number one thing I
would consider is whether or not your product needs support material. For example, this airplane has wings and
you can see that these wings are not touching the plate, so
the 3D printer can't print in thin air. In order for
it to actually make this part, you have to include some material
under it so that it can print on top. What the printer actually does is instead
of creating a solid support structure, it makes a very loosely meshed support
structure so that it's easy to peel off. >> I just take that off
with some pliers or a file. >> Right. In the basic tab, you can see that
there's an option for support type and you can put support structure
wherever you want and whatever form. >> Where would you put the support for
something like this? >> For this,
I would put supports everywhere, since there are a lot of locations that
have some overhang or floating material. >> With 3D printing,
we can make object completely solid or completely hollow, or anything in between. Should we talk a bit about that infill? >> Since this a display piece and nothing structural, we can actually
remove a lot of the material inside. Inside the basic menu,
there's an option for fill density. Right now, it starts at ten for default, that means 10% of this
object will be filled with material. >> So 90% of it will be hollow. >> That's right. We can change the setting to speed up or
slow down the print, depending on what your need is. As I mentioned, since it's only aesthetic, we can drop this down to 5% and
print it that way. >> It sounds like the infill consideration
is influenced by two factors. One, the amount of time that you have. >> Right.
>> If you're pressed for time, perhaps you make an object
a bit more hollow. >> Right.
>> And second is what you plan
to do with the object. >> Right.
>> Is it just sitting on your desktop and people are looking at it,
then it can basically be a hollow object. >> Right.
>> Versus if it's a bracket that's holding something heavy, you may want something
that is a bit more solid inside. >> That's right. >> Are there other considerations? How about actually you mentioned
the resolution of the print? >> Sure,
one way you can change the quality of the print is through
the basic menu again. You have several options,
the first of which is the layer height and that's going to describe the amount the
print head moves up between each layer. >> Okay. >> If you decrease this height, you'll
get a higher resolution on the z-axis. >> What's the typical resolution level? >> That depends on the type of printer. >> Typically, in the MakerLab, we print most of our objects at
a layer height of around 250 microns. What that means is that four
layers equals one millimeter, or in other words, each layer's only
a quarter of a millimeter thick. As a point of reference, the width of
a sheet of paper is about 100 microns. The UItimaker, as well as the Makerbot, will print something as fine
as a width sheet of paper. But typically, we don't do that because
the parts that we use look pretty good actually at 250 microns and
we don't want to stick around for days to have the object print. Anything else we need to do, Danny, before
we actually start the printing process? >> No, at this point, we can go ahead and
select this button to save the tool path. It'll actually save it directly
to our SD card, in which case, we can use that to print it. >> It's saved, and you're going to
take the card and do what with it? >> Once we have the part on the card, we
can take it and plug it into the printer, in which case, the printer's going to read
the part from the card and begin printing. >> Both the Ultimaker as well
as the MakerBot use an SD card to read the file to print. >> That's right. [MUSIC] Here's our jet airplane. Nice job, Danny. >> Thank you.
>> It looks great. >> What we're going to have to do is
remove this airplane from the platform and remove the support material. What we'll have left is
the fighter jet on its own. >> Here it is, Danny. What do you think?
>> I think it looks good. >> Great job. Danny just took us through the steps on
how you can turn your ideas into objects using 3D printing technology,
in this case, to make a plastic airplane. In other parts of this course,
you'll see lots of other examples of people using this technology to
revolutionize the economy, all the way from making 3D printed earbuds to making
prosthetics for children around the world. Hope you stick around
to see these videos and learn more about this
fascinating new technology. [MUSIC] [SOUND]